Читать книгу Struck by Lightning - Christa Maurice - Страница 5

Chapter 1

Rebecca perched in the gallery window, staring out at the rain, as unmoving as the sculptures surrounding her. The heat wave had broken about an hour ago with a sudden thunderstorm that drove away all potential customers. Rebecca scowled at the empty sidewalk. The gallery was her last shot. Part of the deal with her parents when she’d borrowed money for it was if she wasn’t earning a living by January, she would take the job in her uncle’s accounting firm, answering phones, filing papers, scheduling appointments. It sounded like a slow suicide, but her parents weren’t in the mood to just write checks with no strings attached anymore.

She had opened the gallery with three friends seven months ago. The first couple of months she’d optimistically hung up her pencil sketches and watercolors. Bess’s landscapes had done better. Much better. So had Max’s ceramic objects. And Edie’s copper wire jewelry. When Rebecca hadn’t sold a thing in a month she’d decided to head in a different direction.

Fine art.

Rebecca turned away from the wet street and looked at her latest creation, Think Space. A couple of shelf brackets, a board, some white paint and a piece of white card stock with the word “think” printed on it in bold black letters. Ten dollars’ worth of supplies, half an hour of work, and she had the nerve to put a three hundred dollar price tag on it. Worse, the curator of the city art museum had been in and told her the price was too low for such a piece of genius. And then he’d bought one of her Broken Home pieces, which consisted of smashed dinner plates cemented to a board, for his personal collection.

That reminded her, she had to make another one of those. She’d have to con Max into driving her to the Salvation Army for plates. Maybe this time she’d put silverware in it. She stood up and stretched. No matter how long she sat here, she wasn’t going to get another customer. Plus, she had to get home and make some more “fine art.” Last week she’d experimented with glitter and tinfoil based on the idea that people liked shiny things. The first two pieces had been snapped up. Disgusting.

She walked around the gallery checking the doors and windows. The building had started life as a grocery store at the turn of the century when grocery stores stocked just the basics and housewives spent all day cooking. The windows facing the street were nearly floor to ceiling and the floors were thin planks of golden oak. Sometime later someone had walled in a room off the back, which they used for lessons and life-drawing sessions that they charged local artists to sit in on. Max had built a display shelf in the middle of the floor for his ceramic objects. He’d also refurbished a case for Edie’s jewelry.

Rebecca paused at the heavy old wooden desk they kept next to the door and used as a counter. Taking the money out of the cash drawer, she spent a few minutes filling out the deposit slip so she could drop it in the night deposit at the bank on the way home. They had done about five hundred dollars in business that day, all her “fine art.” Flipping through the record book, she scowled. She wouldn’t have to take that job at her uncle’s accounting firm at the end of the year.

Unfortunately, she couldn’t decide if she would be happier making crap that intellectuals told her was brilliant or filing papers in an accounting firm.

She scooped her sandals out from under the desk and stuffed them in her bag before picking up the deposit, setting the security system and stepping out the front door. By the time she’d walked the block and a half to the bank, her black hair hung down her back in a wet, heavy rope and her purple skirt stuck to her legs. The way it was coming down, she would be just as wet with an umbrella. She turned onto Garfield to cut home the short way. About halfway down the block, the skies opened up and the rain started pouring down in sheets.

Rebecca hesitated. About equidistant between the gallery and her apartment, the fire station up ahead had its garage doors open. She sprinted for the opening and ducked through before she realized someone was standing there.

She smiled and watched him melt a little. Men were so easy. A wet t-shirt and a sweet smile and they would just about rob banks for you. Of course, he wasn’t bad-looking either. He had the face of a Botticelli angel framed with golden hair. His pale blue eyes studied her as she leaned over and wrung out her long hair.

“Some storm,” he said.

She reassessed her first impression. Just look at that grin. He thought he had her. He still had the features of a Botticelli angel, but if his mother was an angel, his father must have been Han Solo. That might make him a challenge. “It certainly is.” She squeezed the excess water from her skirt leaving pools of purple on the floor. “It didn’t seem so bad when I started out.”

“Things change pretty fast sometimes.”

Rebecca concentrated on shaking out her skirt so he wouldn’t see her roll her eyes. Too easy. She peered out the door. The rain still came down in buckets. She really did have a good excuse to stay, but she could almost see her place from here. Two blocks, a short alley and around the corner. Home, where all her “fine art” was. Uck. Taken from that perspective it was a lot more fun to stand here and dazzle this guy.

“So.” She sat daintily on the push bumper of the engine. “You get to ride around town in this behemoth.”

“Actually, I ride around town in that smaller behemoth.” He gestured toward the truck in the next bay.

She leaned over to look at it. Studying the lights on top, she wondered how difficult it would be to wire little flashing lights into an art piece. If people liked shiny things, they would like flashing things even better. Christmas lights would do the trick. Wait, wasn’t she in the middle of teasing a guy? She glanced up at the guy so she could show him how thoroughly underwhelmed she was with his truck. He’d adopted that hero pose. Legs braced, arms folded, shoulders pulled back to show off his chest. Almost like he expected a photographer to pop out and take his picture for the annual charity calendar or bachelor auction. Rings? No rings. Definitely a bachelor.

“So you’re like a professional hero or something?” she asked.

He shrugged, suddenly seeming uneasy. “I guess.”

The rain seemed to be letting up. Pretty soon she’d be able to make the dash for her place so she could create more stuff to pay her rent. She stood up. “And you get to wear that cute little uniform.” She dragged a fingernail under the corner of his collar.

He frowned slightly. His lips, she decided, were really well formed. She’d love to draw them. Or maybe just kiss them.

She adjusted the shoulder strap of her bag. “You know it’s supposed to be terribly romantic to kiss a man in uniform.”

“It is?”

“Sure. Don’t you ever watch movies? Or do you just like movies with big explosions?” She smiled to take the sting out of her insult, but he didn’t seem to notice that he’d been insulted. Far, far too easy. “It’s also supposed to be very romantic to kiss in the rain.”

He glanced out the door and back at her. His eyes were on the verge of losing all focus.

She walked out into the rain and stood in the drive halfway to the street. He hadn’t moved. Cocking her head to the side, she gestured him forward with one finger. “Come on. Be a sport. It’s all in the interest of science.”

He followed her out the door.

Rebecca wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled herself against him. Her breath caught when he closed his arms around her waist, his body warm and hard against hers. He was a lot stronger than he looked. He leaned over her, shielding her from some of the rain and pressed his lips against hers.

The goose pimples, she informed herself, were from the cool rain. And her hair was on end because of the lightning earlier. She pulled herself tighter against him, shuddering. One of his hands, warm on her skin, slid under the wet cloak of her hair to cup the back of her neck. His fingers tangled into the last dry strands. She dug her hands into his shoulders, straining to somehow get closer. The rain streamed down their bodies, cooling and heating her at the same time. Lightning cracked overhead.

Rebecca jumped and pulled herself away from him. “Well, that was interesting.” She stumbled back a step. “We’ll have to try it again. At least two more times. Once with just rain and once with just the uniform, don’t you think? In the interest of science.”

“Anytime,” he said.

She wondered if he was breathless or if she just wanted him to be. “Great. Next time then. Gotta go, hero.” She spun around and hurried across the street.

“Hey, I didn’t get your name,” he called as she reached the opposite corner.

“I didn’t get yours either,” she called back. She had to work very hard to not run down the block. When she reached the mouth of the alley, she looked back. He was standing outside the station watching her. Great, now he was going to know where she lived. She’d just wrecked her best shortcut home.

She dove into her apartment and leaned on the closed door. There was a lesson to be learned here, and that lesson was, never kiss an unknown guy when lightning might strike anywhere in the vicinity. The electricity in the air unhinged a girl.

Rebecca shivered.

That was just… Wow.

She hadn’t wanted to let go. She still wished she hadn’t. Her skin throbbed with the contact.

It had to be the storm. Never had she reacted to any man like that. Long ago she’d decided she wasn’t one of those women who would fall madly in love with some Romeo and be floating on air every time he called. Not her style at all.

And that guy. He was most certainly a Romeo. Charmingly dangerous. Love ’em and leave ’em. She didn’t have time for a relationship. She had to stabilize her income enough by the end of the year so she wouldn’t have to invest in a business wardrobe and wear heels and stockings to the office every day. Rebecca stripped off her dripping clothes and hung them over the shower rod. No way could she walk home along Garfield and Worchester anymore. She’d have to use Market and Belview. A little out of the way, but better than running into the hero again. After she changed into dry clothes and toweled her hair, she settled into the corner of the couch with her sketch pad. She needed to get to work on another sale piece, but she wanted to get a quick sketch of the hero’s face before she forgot it. As if she’d ever forget it.

* * * *

Dan watched until she went around the corner. He thought she’d paused before she vanished, but he couldn’t be sure. That far away the light wasn’t great. Heck, the light wasn’t great here. He hadn’t been able to tell for sure if her eyes were blue or gray. Her hair was black and her body was pretty nice under her wet clothes. Slim and lithe. No shoes. Why wasn’t she wearing shoes? He wandered into the dorm where Kevin and Jack were engaged in another serious conversation, which was better than the two of them shouting at one another like they had been last spring. His shoes squished on the floor and he was becoming aware that he was soaked from head to toe from standing in the rain. He dropped onto the foot of Mark’s bunk. “I just had the weirdest experience of my entire life. This chick walked in out of the rain, demanded that I kiss her and then walked away.”

“That must have been terrible for you.” Kevin sighed.

Dan tried to fix his gaze on Kevin, but couldn’t focus. He guessed Kevin was trying to be sarcastic, but it didn’t matter. He had to find that girl. She’d said they had to continue their experiment, but who knew if she would ever appear again. “Jack, Kate’s lived in this area for a while. Do you think she’d know her? Black hair, light eyes, hot body.”

“No, Kate doesn’t socialize in the neighborhood much, and she doesn’t tend to notice hot women anyway.” Jack rested his chin on his fist.

Dan turned to Kevin. “What about your girlfriend, Kevin? She lives around here.”

“She’s not my girlfriend.” Kevin growled. “Quit calling her my girlfriend.”

“Whatever she is, do you think she would know? Jessica? That’s her name isn’t it?” Dan leaned forward.

“I don’t know. Ask her next time you see her,” Kevin mumbled. He stared at his hands.

“Yeah.” Dan stood up. “I can ask her the next time I see her.” He wandered out to the locker room to change into dry clothes. As he dried off, he started working his way through the encounter more logically.

She’d walked in out of the rain. That meant wherever she was going to and coming from, it wasn’t far. In fact, she hadn’t had any shoes on so she couldn’t go very far at all.

Why hadn’t she had any shoes on? He paused buttoning his shirt to stare at his reflection in the mirror. What kind of girl wandered around the city without shoes? What kind of wild, flirty girl dragged a guy out into the rain to kiss him?

Back to the walking. She walked in out of the rain and hadn’t been at all impressed with him. Instead, she’d seemed hostile. Challenging. She had slapped down his every attempt to be charming. But at the same time, she’d been staring at him. Studying him. Having a woman study him like that was never a bad thing and usually indicated interest. And ordering him to kiss her really indicated interest.

But if she was so interested, why did she walk away?

Dan finished buttoning his shirt and went into the day room where Cap, Mark and Lew were watching TV. Kevin and Jack were presumably still talking about Kevin’s not-girlfriend. “This girl just forced me to kiss her,” Dan announced.

Cap grumbled. Mark didn’t take his eyes from the TV. Lew turned to look at him. “How did she force you to kiss her?”

“She ordered me to. None of you guys has seen a skinny girl with black hair around the neighborhood, have you?”

“No, shh,” Mark hissed.

Dan looked to see what they were watching. A movie on DVD. An old one, if that was really Jack Lemmon. He grabbed the box off the table. Bell, Book and Candle, with Kim Novak, Jimmy Stewart and Jack Lemmon. Dan watched the screen for a minute. For some reason Kim Novak’s character reminded him of the girl outside. Except she was blond and curvy and a witch. But neither one of them seemed to be much into shoes. He wondered if the mystery girl had a cat too. He dropped the box on the table and walked out to the apparatus bay.

She’d left puddles on the floor. Drying puddles of purple water. It was proof, at least, that she’d been there. He looked down the block. She had to have stopped at the corner and looked back. It wasn’t that hard to see in the rain. And she’d said they were going to have to continue their experiments. That meant she’d be back, right?

“What’s that on the floor?” Lew asked.

“She was dripping wet,” Dan answered.

“She dripped purple?”

“I guess the dye in her skirt ran or something.” Dan kept staring down the street. How long had that girl lived right in his district without him noticing her?

“She went that way?”

“Yeah. I wonder if she lives up around that corner.”

“Might. There’s a couple of houses split up into apartments down there. Ask Jack. He lives around here now. Maybe he’s seen her.”

“Jack hasn’t seen anything but his landlady since winter.” Dan turned to look at Lew. “Besides, I already asked him.”

Lew shrugged. “I guess you’ll just have to start walking the neighborhood.”

“I might.”

* * * *

Rebecca walked into the gallery the next morning to find Max and Bess already there, moving things around. Tall, lanky Max was doing most of the labor, while Bess, shorter and thicker did the bossing around. Lack of sleep had Rebecca’s eyes feeling like sandpaper and she wasn’t up to gallery politics this morning. She’d been awake most of the night listening to the rain on the roof. This morning she had pulled on jeans, a t-shirt and an embroidered vest in her hurry to get to the gallery in time to open it.

“My, my Rebecca, don’t we look perky this morning.” Bess sneered.

Rebecca dropped her bag under the desk and kicked off her shoes before she headed to the coffee pot. “What are you guys doing?” she asked when she had a cup firmly in hand and half-finished.

“Little change of scenery,” Max said.

Rebecca nodded, only now realizing that all but one of her pieces had been moved to the back of the gallery while most of Bess’s occupied prime wall space right up front. She retreated to the desk to wait for them to leave. Once they left she could move things around so they were more equitable again.

“There’s a woman from the paper coming by,” Max announced.

Bess hissed at him.

“Oh?” Rebecca asked. That would explain the sudden move in the gallery. “How come?” she asked as innocently as possible.

“She’s reviewing us for the paper.” Max started juggling three of his ceramic shelf goblins. Rebecca watched them rise and fall, waiting for the inevitable drop and smash.

“Will you stop that,” Bess snapped. “We don’t have time to clean up after you. Help me move this.” She stood next to the case containing Edie’s jewelry.

Max caught all his goblins without dropping any and lined them up on the shelf before helping Bess move the case back two feet so it butted against his shelf.

“Bess, are you going to leave anything up front?” Rebecca asked. She walked over to Max’s goblins. They were oddly cute little monsters and sold quite well. He somehow managed to get a different and appropriate expression on each little face. The one he called Trouble had his legs hanging over the edge of the shelf and crossed at the ankles and was twiddling his thumbs trying desperately to look innocent. She picked up Trouble and turned him over in her hands. His expression reminded her of that firefighter last night. Fiendishly virtuous. “Hey Max?”

“What?” Bess had him up on a ladder hanging another watercolor that had been in the back room. He stood on top of the ladder with the screwdriver dangling from his hand and a mouthful of screws.

“Can I have this?”

“You want Trouble?”

Rebecca sighed. “I have trouble. I just want this little guy.”

“Why are you taking stuff out of stock?” Bess demanded. “You can’t just take stuff out of the gallery stock like that.”

“I asked if I could have him.”

“What are we supposed to sell?”

Rebecca looked around the room pointedly. “It looks like we’re supposed to sell watercolor landscapes.”

Bess scowled. “I’m trying to make the place look good for the woman from the paper.”

“Claudia Sanchez.” Rebecca snapped her fingers. She smirked. Bess used to be a likable, pleasant person to be around, but the gallery had brought out a previously unknown competitive streak. When they first opened, she had been outselling everyone else with her inoffensive, competent landscapes, but when Rebecca had turned to high art and been discovered by the local art crowd Bess had stopped being the gallery star and started being a huge pain.

“Claudia Sanchez?”

“The art reviewer at the paper. She bought one of my pieces the other day.”

“She what?”

“She bought one of my pieces. Look at the log.” Rebecca gestured to the desk where they kept the sales log so they would know at the end of the month how much commission each of them was owed. “So Max, can I have this guy or not?’

Bess stalked over to the desk and flipped through the log.

“You can have it,” Max said from the top of the ladder.

Rebecca smiled and ran her thumb along the edge of Trouble’s ear. Behind her she could hear Bess grumbling. She carried her goblin to the desk and slipped him inside her bag. “You know, this does look nicer. The floor is so open now.” She walked across the middle of the gallery and stopped in front of the window. “Hey Max, could you run a wire across the window about a third of the way from the ceiling that we could hang a couple of Edie’s necklaces from? I think they would catch the light really nicely.”

“I have to go to work.” Bess slammed out the front door.

“Why do you do that to her?” Max asked when the windows stopped rattling.

“Because she makes it so easy.” Rebecca shrugged. “I want to move the jewelry case back where it was too. Why do you let her talk you into this stuff when you know I’m just going to make you move it back?”

Max shrugged and straightened the watercolor he’d just hung. “So you want a wire across the window?”

A customer walked in, so Rebecca went to work helping her while Max moved the jewelry case back. By the time the woman left, having purchased two of Max’s larger goblins as bookends, Max had the wire strung. Rebecca climbed on the window’s deep sill to start hanging a few of Edie’s larger necklaces. She had three clasped around her neck to keep her hands free.

“You have students this afternoon?” Max asked.

“I have a student this afternoon.” Her student, Monica Raines, had been taking lessons for two years. Monica didn’t want to be a professional, she just wanted to be good at her hobby. Rebecca suspected she also wanted to contribute to Rebecca’s income. She looked out the window. The owner of the second-run movie theater across the street was changing the marquee, and the woman who owned the newsstand next to the theater was putting up a new window display. A group of people walked out of Meechan’s Kitchen. Not many people roamed on the sidewalks at this time of day, but school would be out pretty soon and they would have to chase kids out of the gallery before they broke stuff.

A blond guy ambled along the sidewalk looking at the shops with interest. Rebecca took another necklace off her neck and reached up to hang it in the window without taking her eyes off the guy. They didn’t have a lot of trouble in the neighborhood, but everybody tended to keep an eye on suspicious people too. She watched him turn slowly, taking in the bank and the grocery store. Just as he focused on the gallery, she recognized him. Leaping out of the window, she bounced a few steps into the gallery so she stood in shadow where he wouldn’t see her.

The professional hero. What was he doing strolling down the street so intently today? She didn’t remember ever seeing him around before. In fact, she didn’t remember ever seeing him before last night. He wasn’t looking for her, was he? Her heart skipped, but she wasn’t sure if it was with hope or fear.

“What’s the matter?” Max asked. He looked out the window.

“Nothing,” Rebecca said. Her face felt hot. He was still standing under the marquee of the theater staring down the street at the library or the apartment building next to it. He certainly did look like he was searching for something. Or someone.

Max walked closer to the window and peered out. “It didn’t look like nothing.”

“Get out of the window.” Rebecca grabbed the back of his shirt and pulled him out of the light. Across the street, the professional hero started making his way up the street again. She watched him until he walked around the corner of the theater.

“Do you know that guy?” Max asked.

“No.”

Max nodded. “Okay, are you playing games with that guy?”

“You have no faith in me.”

Max put his arm over her shoulder. “I have absolute faith in you. Are you playing games with that guy?”

The door opened. Claudia Sanchez stepped in as though she was far too good for this one-horse town. She smoothed her hand over her perfectly coifed hair before speaking. “Hello, I’m Claudia Sanchez. From the paper. I called earlier.”

Rebecca plastered on her best sales face. “Hello. It’s a pleasure to see you again. I hope my Dream sculpture found a good home with you.”

“That was yours, wasn’t it? It looks very nice in my spare bedroom.”

Rebecca half expected her to say it matched her bed spread, but she didn’t. “Glad to hear it. Feel free to look around. Max and I will be here to answer any questions you have.” She turned back to the window. The hero was most definitely gone so she stepped up on the sill and finished hanging the necklaces.

Why was he wandering down the street today? She felt pretty sure she’d never seen him before last night. Rebecca licked her lips. It had been a great kiss. But if it hadn’t been raining and there hadn’t been lightning and he hadn’t been in uniform, it wouldn’t have been so great. No, she thought, it would have been a pretty average kiss. She could prove that by going back to the station some rainless night and looking up the professional hero for a control kiss. And then maybe a rain-only kiss.

And then one out of that uniform.

That image sprung to mind. Rebecca shivered and hung the last of Edie’s necklaces in the window. The large, chunky amethyst on it caught the light and flared it around the room. She had to put that guy out of her mind at the soonest opportunity. She didn’t have time to be messing around with heroes.

* * * *

Dan opened the door of his car, which he’d parked around the corner. Before he’d even settled into the driver’s seat, he had out his map. She could have been coming from anywhere and going anywhere. According to the marquee, a movie had let out not long before he’d seen her and the restaurant sign said it had been open, as had the newsstand. The crabby woman in the gallery said they usually closed before then. The library and the bank had both been closed also, but that didn’t narrow the field enough. Her destination wasn’t any easier to figure out. The block she’d turned onto had half a dozen houses split up into apartments and one actual apartment building along with several single-family dwellings. Worse, there was one alley connected to the next road down and a cul-de-sac with yet more apartments.

He studied the map for something he might have missed that would point to the only logical location for her. Anything that would narrow his search a little bit.

Maybe if he walked it. He could park at the station and walk the route he’d seen her take. She hadn’t had on any shoes, and if the alley was rough and glassy she couldn’t have gone that way. Or he might spot the purple skirt hung outside to dry someplace. Or the girl herself might be sitting on a porch drinking her morning coffee. And failing all that maybe Kevin’s ungirlfriend would say, “Her? Oh sure I know her. You want her number?”

He had to find her. Had to. He couldn’t really explain to himself why, but he had to. He set aside the map and started the car. He had two days to patrol before he had to be back on duty and if he hadn’t found her by then, he’d just have to take up his spot at the bay doors, watching down the street for any sight of her.